Gears of War 3

It was definitely a mixed day with some very impressive games, a few lows and some surprises. The biggest game that wowed me was Binary Code at the Sega booth. It’s a new squad-based third-person shooter by the team that did Yakuza. It’s surprisingly innovative, using in depth voice commands to direct your two squadmates. In addition, your squad will direct you as well, telling you to flank left or right or move into position. Throw in a destructable robots that show and are affected by damage to certain body parts and this could potentially be one of the smartest shooters to come along in a while. I just hope the voice command works effectively.

Other highs that I saw were, of course, Modern Warfare 3, XCOM (that had a drastic overhaul since last year and is now more strategy based), SoulCalibur V (I like the direction the team is taking the game in.) and Batman Arkham City (With a playable Catwoman tossed into the mix, this could top the original).

The low points were Centipede, which I had high hopes for, but it never got off the ground, and Prototype 2. I really wanted to see something drastically different, but other than the improved combat system, I didn’t see enough. I wish that Radical Entertainment leveraged the new character Sgt. James Heller’s military background to offer some more variation to the power fantasy gameplay the team wishes to offer.

I also did manage to snag a few pics of random booth babes for those of you asking for them.

There are two kinds of surprises at E3. The first strikes suddenly like a lightning bolt to the spine. It’s the announcement of Twilight Princess, an event that made grown men cry, or the unveiling of Fumito Ueda’s upcoming The Last Guardian. The other surprise is more complicated. It’s knowing vaguely about a game or product and finally playing it at the show. A quick hands-on sticks in your mind; it wows you because it’s light years better than what you expected. It’s swelling wave that overcomes you rather than a quick strike to the senses.

At this year E3, the surprises were more of the latter, and no one amazed me more than Nintendo with a handful of amazing announcements. The most important one was the Nintendo 3DS, which promised 3D without the glasses. I was skeptical of this at first. I mean could this really be true? If all these high-tech companies can’t figure out the glasses bit, how could Nintendo?

Well, the Nintendo 3DS is legit. It works beautifully, almost like magic. Your eyes naturally drift to the 3D screen and just stay there, hypnotized. The effect feels like you’re looking at one of those 3D baseball cards, only this feels more real. What makes this device so brilliant is that there’s a viralness to the experience.

The 3D isn’t something that can be translated on video or on a glossy magazine. It’s something that needs to be seen to be believed, but once you glance at the screen, it’s hard not to be sold on Nintendo’s new hand-held. It’s something that may be as important as when games went into another type of 3D — from sprites to polygons.